


Christmas

by davecabbage



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Bones swears a lot, Friendship, Gen, Shore Leave, a little bit of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-17
Updated: 2014-02-17
Packaged: 2018-01-12 20:44:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1199577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/davecabbage/pseuds/davecabbage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>McCoy hates Christmas. Jim decides to fix that. There is a lot of swearing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Christmas

**Author's Note:**

> Something I wrote for my dear friend keda-loco when she came up with the headcanon that Bones gets depressed at Christmas because he misses his daughter. So I had to make it happier by including the other half of her favourite brotp.

 

Leonard McCoy hated Christmas. Granted, he hated a lot of things, but he really hated Christmas. Not once in all the years since his divorce had he celebrated it. Christmas meant being woken up at inhuman hours by Joanna, being dragged downstairs in the cold and sitting with a fresh mug of coffee as he watched her rip apart the wrapping paper and revelled in her glee.  
  
But Joanna was not in his life anymore and Christmas only meant a card with her name scribbled on it and an empty message. Since then Christmas meant a bottle or two of whatever would chase the memories away for a little while. Leonard McCoy did not celebrate Christmas, and he certainly did not spend it with anyone else.

“Merry Christmas, Bones!”  
  
And then there was this asshole.  
  
Jim Kirk stood there in the doorway with that irritating grin he was always wearing on his stupid face and two grocery bags in his arms. McCoy rubbed his face and prayed to whoever the hell would listen that this was just a bourbon induced hallucination. He opened his eyes. No, the little shit was still there.  
  
“What are you doing here?” he asked.  
  
The kid, as usual, did not wait for an invitation and squeezed his way past McCoy into the tiny apartment.  
  
“Cooking you Christmas dinner, of course.” Jim replied.  
  
“No you’re not.” McCoy closed the door behind him anyway.  
  
“Oh come on Bones. No one wants to be alone at Christmas.” The fucker was already in the kitchen and unloading all of his crap onto the counter.  
  
“I do.”  
  
Why did he answer the door? Why didn’t he play dead on the couch? Because this was Jim, that’s why. The kid would have kept knocking until he wore a fucking hole through the door.  
  
Jim opened the fridge, took one look at the pitiful contents, or lack of, and closed it again. “Had a feeling the supplies would be needed. You know for a doctor you don’t do too well at following your own advice.”  
  
“Since when did you become my nutritionist, kid?”  
  
Jim took no notice as he raided McCoy’s cupboards, pulled everything out and flicked through his PADD. The little shit had this all planned out. All he needed was an apron to complete the domestic scene. Christ McCoy _was_ drunk, or maybe not drunk enough.  
  
McCoy sighed. When it came to Jim, he knew when to pick his battles. He’d need a priest to exorcise the kid from his kitchen at this point. “Just try not to burn my apartment down.”  
  
Anyone would have thought he’d just told Jim that it was, well Christmas from the stupid shit-eating grin that broke out on his face. McCoy just rolled his eyes and left him to it. “But if you think I’m going to help, you’re sorely mistaken.”  
  
McCoy slumped back down onto the couch and took another shot. At least he didn’t have to worry about feeding himself. That half eaten sandwich at the back of his fridge was starting to smell anyway. He closed his eyes. Jim was responsible for a ridiculously expensive starship, that he had wrecked twice but he supposed those _were_ dire circumstances, as well as the lives of thousands of Starfleet officers on a daily basis. The kid could handle one little dinner without McCoy babysitting him.  
  
Cooking had never been his forte anyway; Pam had kicked him out of the kitchen on more than one occasion for burning himself and the food. But that was back when he was actually around to enjoy her meals. Towards the end he had grown accustomed to warming up the plate she had left him in the middle of the night.  
  
He hadn’t been surprised when Pam served him with the divorce papers. The space between them in their bed had gradually widened. The silence in their conversations had expanded. The time between seeing each other grew. But Joanna was a constant. She was always there. Always on his mind.  
  
They wrote to each other. After a long shift he would retire to his room, pour himself a drink and read Joanna’s latest letter to him. It was in those moments that the ship seemed silent. He didn’t hear the humming of the machinery keeping the giant metal death trap floating in the vacuum of space or the constant buzz of voices as the rest of the crew kept the ship ticking. It was just him and his daughter.  
  
Except that it wasn’t. There were light-years between them. If not for the occasional video message, he wondered how long it would have taken for the sound of her voice to fade from his memory. If not for the photos he kept, how long before the little details slipped his mind? Pam didn’t just take the whole planet in the divorce; she took his whole world.  
  
There were no more Christmases. He left those behind when he left Pam and Joanna. Shore leave meant nothing. They were still light-years apart. Always would be. Leonard McCoy did not celebrate Christmas anymore. There was nothing to celebrate.  
  
“Shit!”  
  
McCoy was on his feet in seconds. Oh shit, what had Jim done now? A bitter smell and a thin stream of smoke issued from the kitchen. How long had he been laying there? He flew into the kitchen and found Jim waving an oven mitt at a blackened mess in a baking tray. Good God, surely that thing couldn’t have been the turkey? A pot of water on the stove was overflowing, various vegetables littered the floor and was that mashed potato on the ceiling?  
  
“Jesus fuck, what are you doing?” McCoy asked.  
  
“Handling it.” Jim said as he grabbed the pot of water and brought it to the sink, spilling it and scalding himself in the process. “Son of a bitch!”  
  
“Dumbass.” McCoy moved to the sink and forced Jim’s arm under the flow of cool water. “Have you even cooked a Christmas dinner before?”  
  
“Erm…”  
  
“Have you ever cooked before?”  
  
“Does canned soup count?”

McCoy closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Did it count as insubordination if you punched your captain while off duty? Jim stood there and rubbed the back of his neck with a sheepish look that McCoy wanted to smack off his face.  
  
“So…” Jim gestured to the food, if you could call it that. “Hungry?”  
  
McCoy speared a piece of turkey with his fork, at least that’s what he kept telling himself it was, and shoved it in his mouth. He ate in silence and stared down at his plate, but out of the corner of his eye he could see the kid glancing over in his direction at every other mouthful.  
  
“It’s not entirely terrible.” He grumbled. “It hasn’t killed me yet at least.”  
  
It was like rewarding a puppy for not shitting on the rug; that stupid grin found its way onto Jim’s face again. But it was more than that. McCoy was looking at Joanna when she tore open her presents. He saw the crinkled corner of Joanna’s eyes, the tiny dimples and the way all her teeth showed. In the living room as they ate a horribly prepared Christmas dinner Jim wasn’t the cocksure captain whose shoulders held up the weight of the Enterprise and its crew. McCoy wasn’t the doctor who constantly checked up on his captain to make sure he wasn’t doing anything stupid and reckless. It was just the kid from Iowa with daddy issues and the old man from Georgia who missed his family.  
  
“But next time you’re not allowed within a hundred feet of food prep.” McCoy grumbled as he bit into a soggy carrot. Bless the Enterprise for its food synthesizers.  
  
“We can get the whole family together.” Jim said.  
  
Maybe McCoy could get used to this. All of them gathered around a table as Jim fed scraps to that damned tribble they kept; Uhura tried to teach Spock about mistletoe; Scotty argued with a stone faced Keenser and Sulu snuck Chekov some Andorian ale in an attempt to see how much it took to make his accent completely unintelligible.  
  
“You’d be the weird, angry old uncle who yells at the TV in this scenario.” He added.  
  
McCoy was keeping the alcohol though.


End file.
